evidence to assist in finding the date. It is a bloody, extravagant tragedy of the Marston type, composed of murders, lust, incest, ghostly visitations, and seeking comic relief in a lecherous subplot. It is in all respects an imitative play, without the requisite energy to make its blood-and-thunder tyrades strike fire. Ram Alley is an easy going pot-pourri of popular situations, mainly of the school of Middleton, including a spendthrift younger brother who marries his mistress to a rascally lawyer, the rivalry of various gallants for the hand of the rich widow Taffeta, and a maid who masquerades as a man to follow her lover. There are allusions to the statute of 4 Jac. I, c. V, (1606-7) which authorized stocking a man for drunkenness, as when Justice Tutchin says: "Now could I sit in my chair at home and nod, A drunkard to the stocks by vertue of The last statute rarely." This proves that the play was not written before the organization of the Whitefriars Revels. The Prologue protests against "the Satyres tooth and Waspish sting;" declares that the play is to be free of any satirical purpose, and is to be so innocent that even the Puritans will be pleased. Needless to say, such protests as these go for little. This play, like others of the same company, is hard on the legal profession. III. I said at the beginning that the first Whitefriars company was a piece of wildcat speculation, and that the proof of this statement was to be found in their conduct of affairs and in their plays. I have dealt sufficiently with their conduct of affairs; a few comments on their plays will be enough to make my point clear in that respect. In the first place, with the exception of Middleton and Day they had no connections with the better class of dramatists of the day. And Middleton should be discounted because the one play of his which they used was probably borrowed from another company, and he wrote no more for them. As to Day, although he enjoys a certain reputation today, it is certain that he had very little in his own time and should be counted as one of the obscure. All the other men are nobodies. In the second place, if one considers quality of play rather than prominence of author, the conclusion is equally unfavorable. In the whole list only Day's Humour out of Breath may be read with any sense that one is associating with an author of literary taste. All the rest are dull, imitative, second-hand material cut on patterns popular in the first decade of the 17th century, but without style. It is quite plain what Thomas Woodford and his coadjutors in the King's Revels at Whitefriars were up to. They intended to capitalize the great popularity of the theatre in London, and the success which the children's companies at St. Paul's and the Blackfriars had enjoyed, by founding a similar company in the liberty of Whitefriars, just outside the City (a precinct, be it observed, of unsavory reputation in that day as it continued to be for a hundred years). And because their purpose was dishonest (at least Woodford's) they set about selling as many shares as possible and putting on a bold front, while at the same time they gathered a shoddy repertory of plays, partly from old plays given elsewhere, partly from amateurs on their own board of shareholders, and partly from a few hangers-on of the writing profession. The result was what everyone could have foreseenruin. At least one did foresee it, and saved himself before the crash. That man was the wily promoter of the enterprise, Thomas Woodford. University of Illinois HAROLD NEWCOMB HILLEBRAND "DAS KOMMT MIR SPANISCH VOR" The immediate origin of the expression "das kommt mir spanisch vor,"-practically synonymous with the more usual proverb "das sind mir böhmische Dörfer"-in its customary present-day connotation of something strange, rare or outlandish, has probably been correctly traced to the seventeenth century. For although in discussing it, Borchardt' says that it arose at the time of the introduction of Spanish customs into Germany by Charles V, he quotes only Simplicissimus: "Bey diesem Herrn kam mir alles widerwertig und fast Spanisch vor" and no sixteenth century author. Wander, too, does not attempt to trace the saying any further back, but mentions the reports of German travelers and adventurers who had been in Spain as having given rise to it. In Grimm's Wörterbuch, sub Spanisch (5), the phrase is traced as follows: (1) it referred to a proud, haughty person: Schuppius (1663), 114:6 "da sasz Müllerhans über tische und sasz oben an und machte ein solch spanisch gesicht, als wann er mich sein lebtag nit gesehen hätte"; (2) its meaning was extended to refer to matters that are strange, unfamiliar, less frequently wondrous: Goethe, Egmont, III, 2: "ich versprach dir einmal spanisch zu kommen"; (3) a rarer connotation of "haughty" existed parallelly with (1) and (2): Weckherlin (1648), 665: “ja, spannisch bist du neyd, und torrecht du miszgunst"; (4) the now current connotation existed at the same time: Schuppius (1663), 321:8 "es wird Euch zwar, Lucidor, die 1 Simrock, Deutsche Sprichwörter, No. 9620; Eiselein, No. 571. 2 Wilhelm Borchardt, Die sprichwörtlichen Redensarten (Wustmann revision), p. 76, explains its origin by the linguistically and geographically exotic nature of the Bohemian towns, or, less plausibly, by the fact that many of them were destroyed beyond recognizability during the Thirty Years' War. 3 Cf. the English "That is Greek to me," the French "C'est du Latin" or "Pour moi, c'est de l'Hébreu" and the Spanish "Hablar en griego." Op. cit., p. 442. Deutsches Sprichwörter Lexikon, IV, sub Spanisch. 7 Geistliche und weltliche Gedichte, Amsterdam, 1648. herberg etwas spannisch vorkommen," and M. Abele: “deme dergleichen, wiewol sonsten gewöhnliche Wort, fremd und spanisch vorkommen"; (5) instead of the more common "böhmisches Dorf," the phrase "spanisches Dorf" was used: J. V. Andreae:10 "die Ding mir spannisch dörffen waren," and Goethe: "das waren dem Gehirne spanische Dörfer." This purely lexicographical presentation of the matter, however, offering only material from the seventeenth century, does not throw much light upon its development. In turning back, at Borchardt's suggestion, to the sixteenth century, we find that Spain and its people were practically unknown in Germany, and that such knowledge on the subject as existed can be traced to unreliable, wildly imaginative adventurers or to pilgrims. In fact, at the beginning of the century, Spain was hardly considered a part of the European continent at all. Thus Brant, in his Narrenschiff,12 tells us: Ouch hatt man sydt jnn Portugal Und in hispanyen uberall Gold, jnseln funden, und nacket lüt Von den man vor wust sagen nüt. And Hutten complains in Die Räuber13 that the bishops send the people for penance "in das äusserste Spanien." But after the accession of Charles V, when Spain became an integral part of the Empire, these conditions changed. The Spaniards, as a race, began to attract more attention. At first we find ample praise of Charles V14 but also a certain solicitude lest he may prove too foreign to play the rôle of a German emperor. Hutten expresses the following hope in his Clag und vormanung gegen dem übermässigen, unchristlichen gewalt des Bapsts zu Rom:15 So hoff ich zů küng Caries můt, • Gerichtshändel, I, 320, Nürnberg, 1668. 10 Das gute Leben, 221. 11 Werther, Hempel ed., XIV, 69. 12 Zarncke ed., 66, 53, p. 66. 13 D. F. Strauss, Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten, III, 362. 14 Cf. Liliencron, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen, No. 343 and elsewhere. 15 Kürschner, DNL, 172, pp. 242-3. Und werd mit eeren üben sich Dem Bapst entgegen gwaltiglich. Similarly in the folk-song An die deutsche Nation16 Charles is praised in züchten und in ehren ist er ganz wol erkant; wann er das reich soll mehren Here it may even be possible to read between the lines a certain apprehension lest this praise may not be justified. Hutten goes so far as to hint in his Beklagunge der Freistette deutscher Nation1 at the fact that Charles bought his imperial election. The period of expectation soon passed and any enthusiasm that might have existed over the Spanish explorers and conquerers passed with it, at least in the Protestant sections. For when Charles proved to be an enemy of the Reformation and when the Jesuits came, the friendship for the Spaniards turned to dislike and to outright hatred among the classes inclined toward Protestantism. Thus a Protestant, writing on the war of Schmalkalden, says in 1546:18 wo ihr der sachen nicht kompt vor, ein Spanier nem einen ducaten, and continuing, he threatens the invading Spanish (lines 378 ff.) that they will be driven out of Germany. He exclaims (line 388): "Got bhůt uns vor den spanischen zungen" and prays God to protect the Germans from "der Spanier ubermůt. Ihr herz und sinn ist nicht gůt." (lines 397-8). In No. 521 of Liliencron's collection, Charles himself is charged with "hochmůt und falsche lehr" (line 95), and repeatedly the Spanish intruders are accused of murder, adultery, robbery, incendiarism and other Liliencron, Op. cit., No. 469; cf. also Schade, Satiren und Pasquille aus der Reformationszeit, 2nd ed., II, 181, lines 194 ff. 17 Kürschner, ibid., p. 277. 18 Liliencron, Op. cit., No. 519, lines 363 ff. |